During his inauguration on Monday, US President Donald Trump expressed lack of trust in the ability of the ceasefire nailed down between Israel and Hamas to hold in the coming period.
This remark by the US president highlights the intricacies besieging the Gaza truce that has started coming into effect as of January 19.
Nevertheless, a few minutes before making this remark, President Trump said he perceived of himself as a “peacemaker” and a “stabilizer”.
He even boasted of being instrumental in the Gaza ceasefire/hostage release deal, a day before he assumed the office of president in his country.
Trump’s perception of himself as a peacemaker and a stabiliser draws himself close to Egypt and President Abdel Fattah El Sisi who has been calling for hammering out comprehensive, just and permanent peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis for several years now.
President Sisi made this call for peace several times since he came to power in Egypt in mid-2014, one time making it during the United Nations General Assembly meeting in 2016 and another time in the following year in Egypt.
Most of Egypt’s regional actions, including its unrelenting mediation efforts between the Palestinians and the Israelis, are routed in this craving for peace.
In craving this regional peace, Egypt and its president act in the belief that the Middle East conflict has persisted more than enough and that this conflict has fuelled waves and waves of extremism.
Egypt also believes that this extremism will come to an end soon after a just settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is reached. This settlement will deprive extremists on all sides of all pretexts that encourage them to keep pouring fuel on the simmering coals of the region’s religious and ideological wars.
How the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will be settled matters greatly, meanwhile, to efforts to put the region on a course of calm, coexistence and peace.
The Palestinians have suffered for long, being deprived of one piece of their land after another over the years, amid Israel’s expansionist desires. What remains of historical Palestine is hardly sufficient to make a state.
This is why Egypt calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Although the latest Israeli war on Gaza has caused massive devastation to the coastal Palestinian territory, the same war has highlighted the Palestinians’ suffering. It also gave rise to debates about the importance of establishing a Palestinian state that includes the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. President Trump will reportedly revive the peace plan he proposed in January 2020 for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The plan, called ‘Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli Peoples’, will also expectedly undergo some modifications to meet the aspirations of the Palestinians for a fully independent and sovereign state where they enjoy citizenship rights, security and peace like all other peoples around the world.
The peacemaker concept will of course make the US president an essential partner in Egypt’s struggle for just and everlasting peace in a region that has had more than its fill of wars, death and destruction.
This peace push will hopefully repay regional peoples after decades of suffering.
Amr Emam is the managing editor-in-chief of The Egyptian Gazette.
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